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Doug Porter, deputy chief economist at Bank of Montreal, reacted to the first of several polls this week showing the NDP having eclipsed the Liberals in the federal election, and catching up to the leading Tories, by sending a light-hearted note to clients.

“While that’s certainly an ‘interesting’ result,” Porter wrote Tuesday, “it’s not exactly market friendly. In other words, hang on to your hats!”

That’s decidedly not a panicky reaction to spotting socialist hordes at the gates.

Lost in all the understandable excitement about an historic realignment of voter preferences in this election are some reality checks.

The NDP is highly unlikely to win power, needing 119 additional seats to eke out a majority. Some forecasters have the NDP winning just 40 or so seats in total, because of the unpredictable way in which votes split by riding.

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Much more likely is that the Tories will get the additional 12 seats they need to form a majority. And that troubles Bay Street more than the NDP surge. A Tory majority would embolden Stephen Harper to impose even tougher fiscal austerity measures, a mild threat to the robust Canadian economic recovery, but a threat nonetheless.

A majority also carries the risk of an even stronger dollar. Currently valued at $1.05 U.S, the loonie has been above parity all year, stripping Canadian exporters of their price advantage. A majority result May 2 would likely see global currency traders pushing the dollar even higher, greeting a Tory majority as a welcome assurance of a status quo that has seen Canada’s economy recover faster than its G8 peers. A look at the surprisingly mainstream NDP platform shows considerable overlap with the Tories and the Grits. All three parties are committed to balancing the books within five years.

On the biggest spending item, health care, all three parties are also agreed on a 6 per cent annual hike in health-care transfers to the provinces. They each favour a $2.2-billion compensation package for Quebec on the harmonized sales tax to match deals reached with other provinces.

The Tories and the NDP each offer tax breaks to selected vocations, while the Grits and the NDP have both pledged more funding for postsecondary education.

Then there’s Layton’s “Tommy Douglas” approach to governing, if he were to get the chance. As Canada’s first socialist PM, Layton would be determined, as Douglas was in forming North America’s first socialist government in 1944 in Saskatchewan, to first prove his party capable of prudent governance before experimenting with novel policies like, in Douglas’ case, medicare.

Like Harper’s Tories, many of whose campaign promises are conditional on first balancing the budget — likely pushing those promises five years out — Layton is pledged to a similar pay-as-you-go approach.

All 16 spending items in the NDP’s environment platform are conditional on sufficient revenue from a new cap-and-trade system to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Otherwise they’ll be delayed. Ditto a promised boost in Employment Insurance benefits, which will happen only “as finances permit.”

Of some discomfort to Bay Street might be the NDP’s vow to raise the corporate tax rate to 19.5 per cent, in contrast with the Tories’ proposal to cut it to 15 per cent by 2012. Then again, the Grits also would raise the rate, to 18 per cent. All of those numbers are well below the OECD average.

At least in Canada, political events rarely roil the markets, the psychodrama of the 1995 Quebec referendum being among the few that did.

It’s almost scandalous that Quebec sovereignty has not been an election issue, given that the Parti Quebecois is poised to replace a deeply unpopular Liberals in Quebec City, and is committed to holding a third referendum on Quebec independence.

As stability goes, Layton is arguably the best bet, as he’s the only leader who has spoken to it. The only federalist leader who is a Quebec native, Layton has appealed to nationalist sentiments in the province without giving ground on an abiding centralism characteristic of the NDP. By contrast, Stephen Harper’s agenda remains the further decentralization of what already is one of the most decentralized of countries.

Not that any of this matters, to hear Layton himself on the likely May 2 outcome. “We’re used to working very, very hard, and having people come and be interested in our ideas,” Layton said earlier this week. “But then because of our current electoral system we don’t get the number of seats that are warranted by the percentage of vote that we get.”

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